Isolation
Isolation
According to the Oxford dictionary, isolation is:
“The state of being alone, separate, or disconnected from others. It can also describe the separation of something from its surroundings or connections”.
This describes the last 12 months of my life, and I wanted to make sense of what it means to isolate, when it might be necessary and the therapeutic benefits of getting away from the noise, the rat race of life.
If I were an artist or painter, and I had to capture the meaning of isolation, I would draw the silhouette of a girl, sitting in a darkened room, facing away from the door. There would be a small light, just enough for her to see the book she is reading, and illuminating her pensive expression. The colours would be nudes and greys, representing the neutrality of the moment, and the absence of noise. There might be a hint of sadness, but I would want the audience to resonate with her aloneness, rather than the despair that comes with it.
When I found myself in that room, metaphorically speaking, I too, turned away from the door, I closed my social network sites, I cancelled social occasions, and I chose silence over drama. My isolation evolved. At first, I resisted and felt the pull of loss, the grief that accompanied a family breakdown. But I withdrew into a world of quiet, where solitude became my companion.
I read more, reflected, and meditated. I cried more. Sitting with my pain, I filled the room. I clipped my social butterfly wings; they were redundant. I forgot to laugh but learned how to cry. For so many years, I lived outside of my pain, I projected a false self, a larger-than-life clown. The last one standing at the party.
I hid so much trauma until I found therapy, where the release was physical. Suddenly, I was finding wounds and ripping off plasters. I was bathing the festering ulcers of my past, and talking, disclosing, sharing all the pain. One day, the wounds started to bleed and spill beyond the confines of my therapy sessions. That was the day that the dam broke.
I didn’t choose isolation; it chose me. It lives in the space between words, waits patiently for your attention, and its silence is loudest when you let it in. I hadn’t realised I’d surrendered to it until I felt the healing. Slowly, I began to recover, and as the spring arrived and the dust of moving house had settled, I started to step outside of the shadows my sadness had cast. At first, I started to spend an afternoon each week out with my husband and daughter. I started to pay more attention to my appearance again, having hibernated through the winter, turning away from the reflection that only mirrored my pain back to me.
I lightened my hair, and with it my mood! Gradually, the girl in my painting had risen from her corner, gently closed her book, carefully earmarking the page. She turned toward the window, the early morning light illuminating the hint of a smile. She reached for the door. As she walked through the door, to the rest of her life, she looked back at isolation with gratitude. Isolation had repaired her broken heart.
I am still quieter than I was; perhaps I’ve left the noise behind for good. But I’ve found laughter again. I may have more of my journey to take; there isn’t a destination with complex-ptsd. There are just rest stops. I will always need to pay attention to that girl in the room. She may need the quiet again, or she may just need to find the solitude for a while.
Whenever life gets too loud or you feel overwhelmed, isolation can be restorative. It doesn’t need to be lonely. Sometimes you just need to be the only one hearing the silence for the noise to go away.
